Chapter Text
The first time Barty had met Regulus, he had gotten this wayworn feeling which he usually associated with long hikes in cold mountains. He knew that this boy — he thought it was boy — would one day go far, far away. He also felt, inexplicably, that he would as well, because of this boy.
He supposed there had also been a momentary slip of fear that washed itself over his tongue, though he mistook it for the usual iron that plagued his gustatory receptors. The same feeling returned ever since he had looked at Regulus that first day, when they were twelve or thirteen, but he had gotten used to ignoring it and now couldn’t remember why he’d gotten the feeling in the first place.
Barty tucked his legs under him on the mattress; Evan was sitting on the pillows by the headboard with his knees bent and a laptop open with the brightness dimmed. In two days, the application for this random American college would be due, and they had the impossible task of reconstructing their friend into several 500-word essays. Evan was the better writer, his fingers flew furiously over the keyboard, his brow knit as he synthesised Barty’s confused storytelling.
“You don’t want to talk about his coming out?” Evan pressed. He had offered the same idea yesterday; pitching diversity might better secure the spot, which they really needed to do.
“He would hate me for it.”
“He’s going to hate you for shipping him out of the country. There are quite literally galaxy-sized fish to fry, and his emotions aren’t even a sardine.” Evan pressed his palms to his eyes.
He idly tapped at the keyboard, writing short words and deleting them, waiting for something to stick in a way that felt meaningful. The only time Evan had met Regulus had been by pure mistake, around two years ago in a museum in Versailles; Regulus was watching the paintings and then flickering his eyes around the small room in a way that looked more like forced nature that fear. Evan had only known that the wiry boy had been Regulus because, as he tried to catch up to Evan’s accelerated pace, Barty had jogged into the room and turned around so quickly he almost broke his neck.
Barty had been so worried that Regulus had seen him that they left the museum quickly. Evan tried to resist his shoving, but the intensity between his brows and his whispered urgencies were enough to make him run down the front steps; and not question when Barty fumbled around in the trunk with something he looped into his belt.
Evan tried to not remember how they had sped away, back tired fish tailing for gaining control and granted Barty the freedom to drive as poorly as he wanted. He had never been a spectacular driver, that had – apparently – been Regulus’ thing.
None of those memories, Evan thought in any attempt to refocus his attention, would make a good college essay. Being avoided, violently, by friends in a foreign country would make any application committee also run the opposite direction.
Barty slipped from the end of the bed and pulled on the sweatshirt he had discarded on the floor. A quiet rain outside tapped on the glass, leaking through from the patch unsealed at the bottom. He had stuffed a shirt there, rotated it in and out of the laundry to stop it from growing mould.
“I’m gonna go get us something to drink.”
“Really?”
“Look, neither of us can focus and this University of Washington is demanding fully edited essays! I’ll be back in ten minutes.”
He didn’t allow Evan the time to argue before he closed the heavy wooden door and trotted down the stone steps, hands shoved far into his pockets. He supposed, callously, that when he first met Regulus, he really wasn’t expecting that he, Barty Crouch Jr, would be the one to ship him out of the country. When they first met, at around the age of fourteen, Barty wouldn’t have been able to imagine a reason for needing to leave at all. His mother was nice, his father was funny even if cruel at times, it was never bad enough to need to leave.
Regulus had had it bad enough for this whole situation to be reasonable. Besides – Barty shuffled the playlist Evan had made for him at the beginning of the year, using the cheap wired headphones that came with the phone to drown out the silent hallways – Regulus also hadn’t thought he was going to leave. It had always been a thing Sirius had raved on about, but Barty never understood it, so they never became friends enough to really get into the weeds. He wondered what Regulus was going right now; study, probably. He probably had no clue this was happening; he hated hearing stories from Hogwarts.
Barty hadn’t gotten a letter in Regulus’ characteristic green swirls since the start of the year, and even that message had been bland and asinine, like it had been reconstructed from memory over several weeks. That time when they had exchanged letters almost daily, Barty looked back upon with the same sour taste in his mouth as the idea of leaving gave him.
He sorted through his trunk under his bed, finally having made it to his dorm on the other side of the castle. Between a couple empty boxes of cigarettes, which he couldn’t throw away at school, much less in his own dorm, and books he never unwrapped was the bottle of grey goose vodka that Evan and him shared in short swigs on weekend nights. They liked to ration it for the end of the school year, after exams, but tonight was too stressful an opportunity to pass up.
He emptied a water bottle, sniffed the inside and deemed it clean enough for further use, and poured what he eyeballed to be two shots, grimacing at the sharp stench. His roommate was dead asleep, and even when he wasn’t he didn’t seem to care about Barty’s anti-honour code behaviour and general disregard, after that horrid summer, for any rules. Still, Barty made sure to close the door quietly.
He made slow time walking back to Evan’s dorm, dragging his feet and taking wrong turns, water bottle swinging from his fingers and knocking against his leg. The diversity angle, that Regulus was trans and the story of that whole discovery could – would – make an amazing college essay, except for that Barty couldn’t remember it. He tried to walk to clear his head, push away the fog that made it so impossible to remember when the girl with the long, black hair that sat at the end of the table became Regulus. He couldn’t even remember the female name that was still printed on that sickening family tree.
Maybe if they made up a name, a story, an accepting family but social troubles that led to very evident personal growth, Barty thought, trying to construct any essay that would make admissions person like this 2D version of Regulus. Truth be told, the hatred of Regulus’ transness and the family desire to rid themselves of frivolous girls and women ultimately forced them to begrudgingly comply with Regulus. That didn’t mean they didn’t make comments about it. Didn’t mean that it made it any easier for Regulus.
“Why would I tell him?!”
The voice from the around the stone corner sounded mad, like the argument had been brought up too many times before. The voice also continued speaking as Barty slowed and dulled the music.
“He fucking loves it there, why would we bring him along for anything?”
A quiet, slow murmur that Barty couldn’t hear.
“Theres’s art here, there are bookstores here! He would be better to stay; he had no problem with them.”
It took Barty and an embarrassing amount of time to realise that this was Sirius. Sirius, leaving against the stone wall with hard arms folded tightly to his chest, shoulders pressing against the stone, yelling at Remus, who was apparently trying his best to dissuade the tense environment.
“You can’t say he doesn’t like it, when have you asked him?” He tried to reason, squinting under the weight of tiredness and worry; the classic Remus expression these days.
“He doesn’t write; it’s not my fault.”
Barty almost wanted to laugh; none of this was either of the brothers’ faults, they were just stuck in a shitty house at a shitty time and were apparently unable to speak to one another. This realisation sparked a violent resurfacing of a memory: Regulus sprawled in Barty’s clothes, crying about how Sirius was going to school and how their mailbox was filled with letters from Remus, that nobody wrote to him.
He remembered the very similar look Regulus had to Remus; the eyes falling at the corners, the dropped shoulders, the fidgeting with the fraying sleeves and cuffs of aged sweatshirts.
Remus sighed, “So, you’re going to what? Take the painting and leave Regulus, no goodbye?”
“He would stop me.”
“You are going to be the perfect son, then steal the painting, and hope you never see Regulus for the rest of your life. Are you crazy!” Remus didn’t even offer it as a question. Sirius, you are being crazy; he suggested.
“I already never want to see him again.”
Barty put his music back on, louder, tried to reposition his shoulders so he could walk by Sirius and pretend they didn’t have an uncomfortably intertwined history. The moment he turned the corner and the song skipped, he wished he could vanish into the floor and maybe never come out again, but he kept walking and tried to forget everything. Tried to forget years of everything.
Evan wasn’t as appreciative for the alcohol as Barty, though he had drafted an essay that wasn’t comprised of sentences such as “I am writing here and now and it’s amazing and the admissions people love me” which he had taken to as inspiration failed. If they had just started this a couple days ago, he would’ve had the time to really think about this random boy Barty had been infatuated with; rather than making up a vague, sellable, intellectually amorphous boy.
He had been moderately disgruntled when Barty had shown up at their final year at Hogwarts was the demands of writing an entire college application in under a week. He thought there had been an unspoken agreement that extents like these would never be exercised for Regulus again. But Barty had assured him that everything was going to be calm and peaceful – besides for the art thievery – after Regulus was sent to America. That’s all they had to do; send him away.
Evan pursed his lips and chewed on his cheek, picked at his nails and typed ferociously, asked Barty and question that was rarely answered. Did he like a specific food? I don’t know, he doesn’t like to eat. A specific colour? Black. A painting, sculpture? Might be a sore subject, Evan-
“Well, at least I’m trying! I don’t know what you want me to write about this boy!” He flung his laptop to the side and stood up, walking across the room to occupy himself with straightening the books on top of the dressers.
Barty took a swift drink from the metal bottle and didn’t react.
“How ‘bout we talk about his music, played the flute.”
Evan whirled around, “How did this not come up earlier!”
“I forgot! He hasn’t played in forever but used to talk about it all the time.”
“So, an opening line like this: In an orchestra, the; what did he play?”
“Flute,” Barty supplied, feeling, over the dry roughness of his tongue, the words slowly. He didn’t think he was every going to have to associate Regulus with the flute; it had been far more novel when they had first met.
“In an orchestra, the flute is not as structural as the violins, but it’s always been my favourite.”
Barty rolled onto his back and continued the essay, narrating each elaborate semicolon that Evan eventually edited out. Eventually, around the early morning with the threat of classes in the next three hours. Barty, cursed by Evan, dozed on the edge of the bed as the essay was run through every spell checker and editor available for free on the web.
When first bell range, they both shoved their laptops, scraps of paper, and random notebooks into their bags. Barty stole one of Evan’s ties and had to get help on tightening it around his neck; he still zipped up his black and neon green zip-up, covering up all of Evan’s handiwork.
“See you later?” He lingered by the door, aged backpack over one shoulder, eyes bloodshot. “We can go out, I’m sorry about this.”
“It’s really fine, Barty,” Evan repeated, “he's your friend, I get it."
"I'm not dating him anymore."
"I know."
"I love you-"
"Don’t be late for history, you might actually be killed this time.”
Evan put his hands on his hips, smiling at the Barty, lips pulled to make him look half crazy. It was the smile that Barty had always loved, that made him feel shorter than Evan; made him think about staying here instead of going to class, but that might be the alcohol.
Barty was pushed to the door. He clumsily jogged through the near empty hallways before taking the seat closest to the back door, a mistake he wouldn’t have usually made as Sirius and Remus liked to sit one desk in front of this. Sirius glanced at him, his jaw tightening with the usual reminder that they totally didn’t know each other and most certainly could not interact. Last night still burned heavy in his head.
He used to write letters to Regulus during history; used to hide the name at the top of the letters from Sirius, who didn’t have time to suspect anything. In sleepless nights, walking the halls, Barty and Sirius had occasionally brushed shoulders, sharing the same tired eyes, the same flickering memories; Sirius got over it soon enough, started putting his legs in Remus’ lap while Barty kept walking. They had never had the chance to be friends.
If he wrote another letter now, Barty wouldn’t even know where to start. Everything he thought of was too coy, too illusionary, too vague for the letters they used to send. Asking if the recent news from the little museums on the outskirts of Paris where his handiwork would be too much paper evidence, Barty would be killed by either set of parents if they found out. Nothing could say anything of what he wanted to tell Regulus. For the first time this school year, being early November, Barty actually took notes on the lesson.